Now that our new exhibition gallery is open, we wish to take this opportunity of drawing the attention of our colleagues in other institutions to this work and commending to them the problem of making botany more widely known and understood. A number of our more senior colleagues will remember passing through the old public gallery on their visits to this museum before the war. As is well known, an oil bomb fell on the east wing of the museum during an air raid on the night of September 9-10th, 1940. Unfortunately at that time the scientific collections had not been evacuated and the fire that resulted from the bomb did a great deal of damage. Many valuable specimens were destroyed and a very large number of sheets were scorched and saturated by the water used to put the fire out. The old exhibition gallery was extensively damaged and most of its contents spoilt beyond repair. After the war the General Herbarium (Flowering Plants excluding those of Europe) was rehoused on the top floor of the west wing of the museum. The damaged east wing has been completely rebuilt behind the original facade, which was retained to preserve the architectural unity of the building. There are now two floors where previously there was only one. The Cryptogamic collections and main working space occupy the original floor level; the new upper floor has the gallery in the nearest half while in the further half there is the Cryptogamic sub-library, a laboratory and offices for senior members of the staff working on these plant groups. In the five years that we have been engaged in the preparation of our gallery, we have learned a great deal and we are anxious to make our ideas and methods freely available to other institutions, with the hope that they will continue to develop the suggestions that we are able to offer. When we started the scientific planning and development for this project there was a widespread feeling that this was just another burden to be carried, and a tiresome complication making inroads into the time available for taxonomic study and research. As time passed however, we became aware of the considerable interest in and great opportunities for the development of this kind of work. It is certainly not my purpose to deny the paramount importance of research work in the development of botany. On the contrary, I would say that the scientist who is an active research worker is the ideal man to plan an exhibit dealing with his particular group. One must however make the proviso that the scientist must be prepared to try to see his plants with the eye and mind of the ordinary layman. It is inevitably difficult for the expert to explain his group simply and concisely but without misleading over-simplification. He knows all the problems and complexities, and is used to describing his plants with a whole array of specialized technical terms. He has a difficult task but he is undoubtedly the right person to guide the display specialists. If he is really prepared to come to grips with the problem he will find that it is both a rewarding and a fascinating piece of work. It must be remembered that most botanical institutions are financed from public funds of some kind. Those of us who enjoy these facilities have a responsibility to keep the public well informed about out work and in the last analysis a well-informed public is more likely to support our activities than one that feels that botanists have little time to make their subject intelligible to the layman. It would appear that many museums in the United States of America have a better understanding of public relations than most institutions in Europe.